Monthly Archives: March 2010

This post comes as answer to this one Howl’s Moving Castle Anime by Kitsune from Kitsune’s Thoughts. My answer would be too long for a comment, so I thought it’d be much better to link an entry of my opinion.
For me, this movie is one of my all-time favourites. From the very start, I loved the soundtrack, it made me smile and it brought me moments of peace (Joe Hisaishi couldn’t produce anything less than a masterpiece after all), the colours of the city and the vast lush landscapes (don’t forget the movie was made in the traditional way, not through computer!) and the characters. Howl might be a little annoying in the beginning but, you know, real people aren’t flawless.

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We mainly know the great film-makers from their long-length features and we ignore other shorter creations of them. This is one good example. Tezuka parodies here human memory, while giving a quick lesson of cognitive psychology, one might dare say. His style in this short film mingles real people faces with 2D animation, perhaps with the intention of adding a caricature feeling to it. It makes me wonder, if Yuasa Masaaki is influenced directly from Tezuka.

Let’s take a look at the qualities of memory Tezuka mentions in the short:

Memory is based on oblivion. If we couldn’t forget ,then we couldn’t remember either. The useless details are erased.

Memories are organized inside the brain. We remember what leaves strong impressions.

Memory is selective and distorting and idolizing.

Memories are influenced by emotions and influence emotions. Bad memories either get pushed away or get magnified.

Time soothes and minimizes the effect of memories and memories wear off.